Five Crazy Conspiracy Theories About The Roswell UFO

When it comes to the Roswell UFO, we all know the most popular theories; the Air Force issued a report which stated that the debris was most likely from Project Mogul, a top-secret Air Force mission in which microphones were attached to high altitude balloons in order to detect sound waves from Soviet atomic bomb testing. Others insist that this is either deliberate disinformation on the part of the Air Force, or simply that the report is speculative and the evidence for the explanation inconclusive.

But those are just the popular explanations; there are many conspiracy theorists who have concocted much more far-fetched explanations than government disinformation and alien autopsies. So in honor of the Roswell UFO's 67th birthday party this weekend, we bring you five of the craziest conspiracy theories borne out of the world's most famous UFO incident.

1. The UFO Was an Atomic Bomb

[Credit: Crazy Frankenstein]

Jim Keith, UFO conspiracy theorist and author of several UFOlogy books such as Casebook on the Men in Black; The Octopus, wrote an article entitled Roswell UFO Bombshell which claimed that he had evidence supporting the notion that the supposed UFO that landed in Roswell was actually an atomic bomb.

"According to my source, the true story behind the alleged UFO crash was that there was an accident involving a B-29 flying from the Army Air Force Base in Sandia (Albuquerque) to Roswell. From the statements of men in the military who were there at the time, my source states that either an atomic bomb or what is termed a 'bomb shape,' or 'test shape,' the shell of a nuke lacking explosives and atomic capability... was accidentally or purposefully jettisoned above Corona, New Mexico, directly on the flight path between Sandia and Roswell. Along with the bomb, metal foil used for radar jamming, termed 'chaff,' may have also been dropped."

According to Keith, the government covered up this "accident" because they didn't want the Soviets to know that they had depleted the US arsenal of atomic weapons. Not to mention, "The accidental dropping of a nuclear weapon would surely have been cause enough for a cover-up. If this information had leaked to the public, there might have been an extremely negative reaction." Well put, Jim. Well put.

2. The UFO Was a Plane Carrying Chimps

[Credit: Desibucket]

This one's pretty self explanatory. Prominent UFOlogist Kevin Randle wrote in his article "Roswell Explained - Again" that Gerald Brown, a man who had worked with NASA at the White Sands Missile Range, claimed that the incident consisted of "some kind of flying wing [crashing] while carrying five chimps dressed in silver flying suits." There is no evidence that there were chimpanzees at the scene of the crash, nor any explanation for how anyone would have thought chimpanzees were aliens.

3. The UFO Was a Time Machine

[Credit: FilmDistrict]

According to the 1997 book, The Day After Roswell, written by Lieutenant Colonel Philip Corso and William Birnes, claimed that Corso personally helped the US government disperse impossibly futuristic technologies from the Roswell craft to corporations and defense contractors. He contends that many modern technologies, such as fiber optics and computer chips, were the successors of these stolen technologies.

He believes that the "aliens" on board the spacecraft weren't aliens at all, but rather humans from the far future who were genetically engineered to withstand spaceflight.

He also claimed that Earth was covertly at war with extraterrestrials until the mid-80's, when President Reagan defeated them with his Strategic Defense Initiative. The book was included in The Guardian's "Top Ten Literary Hoaxes."

4. Dr. Mengele Mangled Human Children and Pretended They Were Aliens

Journalist Annie Jacobsen wrote in her book, "Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base" that Dr. Josef Mengele (aka the "Angel of Death") and Joseph Stalin entered into some kind of pact during the early Cold War. Inspired by the chaos during the airing of the radio show, "War of the Worlds," Stalin supposedly enlisted Mengele to help him create a panic in America by staging an alien invasion. So, according to Jacobsen, Mengele performed his sadistic experiments on several children, leaving them unrecognizably deformed, and then sent them in a small, futuristic-looking aircraft to New Mexico. Their brilliant plan was allegedly thwarted by a storm that brought the plane down, not to mention the government's elaborate cover-up that was meant to prevent a panic.

According to "Final Events and the Secret Government Group on Demonic UFOs and the Afterlife," a book by UFOlogist and cryptozoologist Nick Redfern, the wreckage from Roswell was manufactured by demons in order to trick humans into thinking that aliens had landed, when actually demons had arrived on Earth. He presents his original research to support the idea that not only were the Roswell aliens actually demons, but all supposed UFO abductions are just a ruse to cover up demons wreaking havoc on our souls. He also asserts that a covert government group called the Collins Elite is aware that alien abductions are actually the work of fallen angels. According to his summary for the book, "They are the minions of Satan, who are reaping and enslaving our very souls, and paving the way for Armageddon and Judgment Day."